Endgame
by KyrieofAccender
Summary: Tim Rice's musical "Chess." Florence, living the end of someone else's story.


A/N: Greetings, all! No, I haven't abandoned my phantomy muse. I just haven't the time for anything fan-fic-ish but oneshots at the moment, lamentably. Such is the curse of being a junior in high school... you can only work on one story at a time. And I have two original fantasy stories fighting for my attention at the moment.

But enough about me... about the story! I was first introduced to the wonderful musical "Chess" by my voice teacher, since my good friend and I were singing "I Know Him So Well" for a master class. I liked the music so much that I had to run out and find the CD (and if you're looking for it, the Original Broadway Cast recording is only available off places like ebay... but it is SO worth the hunt and the extra money, especially since you can't get the song Someone Else's Story anywhere else, and it's gorgeous). I was listening to it a lot a little while ago, and tada! A fic.

Forgive me if I inadvertently botch some of the plot details - sadly, I've never SEEN the show, just heard it.

Please leave a review, and thanks for reading!

* * *

ENDGAME

So, it had all come to nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. They had given her her father back… but only for a little while. Perfect situations must go wrong, after all… and hers had gone wrong; terribly, terribly wrong. He was gone, back to Russia; and her father… the man they had shown her wasn't her father. She was merely a pawn in the vast game of international politics… if he left her, someone had agreed, if he left her and returned to the Soviet Union where he belonged, an American spy would be released.

That was all it had been… sacrificing one life for another. For she had truly been sacrificed. She had nothing left now – her father was probably dead, they had told her, and her hope had died with that explanation. He was gone as well; she had loved him. However… strange it might have been, however awkward, she truly had. Now even the man she'd first come to the tournament with, the Champion – it stung to call him that – was gone. He hadn't even seen her to the airport, hadn't even gloated. That was surprising – she had expected, had wanted, even, for him to glory in her fall, to rub everything that had happened in her face. She could almost hear his sharp voice, telling her that she just didn't have the instinct of a winner. It was something he'd say… and, if he had said it, she might even have felt better after slapping him across the face. She hadn't even been granted that release. She was alone.

The strangest part was that she didn't hate anyone – she was simply numb. After everything that had occurred, she simply did not have the feelings left to hate anyone involved, even though she knew she ought to. Still, she didn't hate the chess champion for winning, didn't hate Molokov and Walter for tricking her into believing her father was alive, didn't hate _him_ for what he had done.

She fully realized what he'd done for her. The look on his face, that utterly devastated, lost look, as the cheers erupted from the American spectators and as the champion leapt from his seat in triumph was all she had needed in order to know. It was because of her that he had lost, because of her that he had returned to that country he both loved and despised. And she had never even gotten the chance to thank him.

Then again, at least she wouldn't ever have to explain that his sacrifices had been in vain, that she had no father for him to save. Something told her that he wouldn't take as well to being a pawn; she was used to it, she had been a pawn all her life, but he was the chess master… no, better to love a stranger than to know all of her secrets.

It wasn't until she felt the plane lurch to the ground again that she realized that several hours had elapsed, several hours which she had passed by drowning out the dim thrumming of the plane's flight by humming the song her "father" had sung to her that day when she had thought everything was perfect, that at last, she'd had everything she had ever wanted. She had wanted far too much for far too long…

_Apukád__erős__kezén_… there was no father to support her in flight now. There was no one.

000

Florence Vassey dropped her bags by the door of her tiny apartment in New York, only just barely remembering to bolt the door behind her before trudging into the other room and sinking down onto her worn old couch. Everything that had just happened in Budapest truly did seem like someone else's story, as though she had lived it only in a dream. But it had all really come about… it would take her some time to believe that, she knew. Absently, Florence looked around her dusty little apartment; it seemed empty without Freddie there, Freddie Trumper the international chess champion, now. Without him and his enormous ego, the place seemed deserted. Strange, that she should miss him in such a convoluted way.

How badly she wanted Anatoly to be there… Florence knew that his soft, heavily accented voice would simply fill her home with warmth, and fill her too. Just as her apartment looked empty without Freddie, she _felt _empty without her Russian.

Absently, she pulled a newspaper clipping out of her pocked and unfolded it; it was all in Hungarian, and she could hardly string two words together, but she could understand the lines that said 'Freddie Trumper defeats Anatoly Sergievsky and becomes the new international chess champion,' and the ones that referred to Anatoly's decision to retract his defection and return to Russia. In the grainy photograph, filled with people jumping up and down excitedly and sporting Freddie prominently displaying a trophy and an American flag, she could still see her Russian, hunched over the chess table like a broken toy, a poor, pitiful chess piece that had been broken in two. Fervently, she hoped his home wasn't as empty for him as it was for her. She hoped that, one day, he would return to the chess world, and beat Freddie. God only knows, he needed to be taken down a peg or two…

Maybe he would. And if he did, she would wait until he had won to try and see him again. She couldn't drag him down into another mess of a match.

With a sigh, Florence dropped her eyes to the floor, but then jerked her head up again. On her coffee table sat a partially played chess game; it must have been a game she had played with Freddie before they had left for Bangkok all those weeks ago. Something must have interrupted them, for they had never finished the game and never put it away; perhaps Freddie had just been stumped and had created a distraction. Cocking her head to one side, Florence surveyed the game, the position of her black pieces – she always played with black pieces – against his white ones, for a very long time, so long that she could almost hear the ticking of the timer and the sharp, irritating buzzer ringing in her ears. Finally, she picked up a small, black pawn in her two fingers and deftly flicked over the white king, placing the pawn in its place. Satisfied, Florence got to her feet and headed into the kitchen, wearing a smile for the first time in days.


End file.
